I enjoy all manner of foods, but Spanish is my favorite by a wide margin. Few cuisines can rival it for regional variety or intensity of flavor. In the eyes of many experts, Spain has passed France in recent years for preeminence in the culinary arena.
Due to the prominence of Spanish food, I write about it a great deal. To study Spanish food is to examine what is at once one of the richest culinary traditions and one of the most cutting-edge cuisines in the world. So without further ado, I would like to introduce my series on the food of Spain. I will look (intermittently) at Spanish food and culture, and how they are reflected in a number of settings.
Let’s begin with Ibiza Restaurant in New Haven. The stretch of High Street just south of Chapel Street is becoming a miniature food row. Where there once was nothing between Starbucks and Ibiza Restaurant, there is now The Little Salad Shop,
a new Chocopologie (a spin-off of the South Norwalk fave),
and next to the Yale British Art Gallery, Froyo World, a frozen yogurt lounge.
But the anchor of High Street, reachable by many different means of transportation, is still Ibiza.
I believe that when one considers ambiance,
service,
and especially, the creativity
and consistency of the food,
Ibiza is one of Connecticut’s top two restaurants (Polytechnic ON20 in Hartford being its closest challenger).
I came to Ibiza on a Tuesday—paella night. While most Americans think of paella as the national dish of Spain, most Spaniards consider it to represent only Valencia, the region from which it hails. Spanish chefs working in America are under a lot of pressure to cook paella. Some wind up cooking it all the time, a few refuse to cook it at all, and some, like the supremely talented Manolo Romero, who serves four versions of the dish,
limit it to Tuesdays ($29 per person, requires two or more people).
Here you see Ibiza’s paella negra being divided for two people dining at the bar,
and here you see an already-divided seafood paella headed to another table.
And here you see a server bringing out an amuse bouche from the chef so tasty that it could disappear in the blink of an eye.
The round ball was a Cabrales cheese croquette served with a little aïoli, the tiny glass a shot of vibrant gazpacho.
But included within our regular menus was a Cantabrian tasting menu ($35 per person plus tax and gratuity).
As tempted as we were by the paellas, we decided that there would be plenty of more Tuesdays but relatively few remaining opportunities to try the Cantabrian menu (Ibiza’s regional tasting menus change every two months). The Cantabrian menu was particularly interesting to me because my biological father, whom I don’t know and who is probably deceased, was from Santander, Cantabria.
But first we cheated and tried a couple of specials that sounded too good to pass up. One was a fresh fig, roasted beet and goat cheese salad,
the other a seafood ceviche served over a cilantro-avocado purée.
Ibiza prepares some great mixed drinks,
but with our meal we enjoyed a gorgeous Garnacha from the Catalayud Denominación de Origen.
The first course of the Cantabrian menu featured a choice of alubias rojas estofadas or sardinas santanderinas. The former was a red kidney bean stew with loin of pork and bacon.
You might know it better as baked beans, or pork and beans, although our American bastardization of this dish is as pallid a misappropriation from Spain as our macaroni and cheese is from Italy. The latter were baked fresh sardines with pisto, the Spanish version of ratatouille.
The second course of the Cantabrian menu featured a choice of cazuela de cordero montañesa or rape. The former was a stew of lamb leg meat, white mushroom, carrot, grape tomatoes and judiones de la granja (giant, starch white beans) in a natural jus.
And rape? Well, obviously it wasn’t what it sounds like, and it wasn’t a plant from the mustard family, either. Rape also happens to mean monkfish, and Ibiza’s was served grilled with mussels, sweet red pepper, potato and green peas in a tomato broth.
The dessert course included a choice of canónigos con natillas or frisuelos con miel. The former were described as natillas with almond fluffy meringue,
the latter as Cantabrian crêpes with rosemary-infused honey ice cream.
All of our dishes were simply incredible. The coup de grâce was a dessert amuse of a polvorón escorted by a chocolate shake with coconut rum gelatin, which were fabulous taken together or with the drink as a chaser.
But there’s no need to take my word about how good Ibiza’s food is. You can take the word of all these people obviously enjoying themselves in my photographs, especially the attractive pair at the end. Or you can try it yourself!
Ibiza Restaurant, 39 High Street, New Haven, 203-865-1933
www.ibizanewhaven.com